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Title Slide: What Did You Want to Be When You Were Younger?

Leah Shales: When I was younger I wanted to be a writer or an archaeologist, mostly an archaeologist.

Jen Hildahl: What did I want to be when I was younger? You know, I think that changed every day, so I don’t have a good answer for that. It certainly wasn’t an accountant.

Luella Schmidt: Oh, when I was really young I wanted to be a writer, which I never really did anything with. I used to write poems when I was little. Later, my backup career was always, I thought it would be cool to be a History Professor, I don’t know if cool is the right word.

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Title Slide: The Benefits of Outsourced Accounting | With Luella Schmidt, Jen Hildahl, and Leah Shales

Leah Shales: There are so many benefits of outsourced accounting, one of which being that here, we have different levels of people with different skills and expertise. So, for example if a client needs a part-time bookkeeper one month and the next month realizes that they need to have an external audit done.

So that requires them to have internal controls documented, implemented. We have people here with experience doing both bookkeeping and working with external auditors, so that’s really great because it cuts down on the cost and time that it would take for the client to hire a bookkeeper and external audit experience.

Jen Hildahl: When you work in an outsourced firm, you have multiple levels of accounting services. You can have your bookkeeper, your accounting manager, your controller, your oversight CFO role for a reasonable cost. Whereas if you wanted those inhouse, you’d have to hire three or four different individuals which is obviously very costly.

Luella Schmidt: Certainly, when a company is smaller, what we see happen is, they need a little bit of bookkeeping like transaction processing. They need a little bit of oversight, such as making sure internal controls are in place and that assets are being protected.

Then occasionally, they need things like guidance on making financial projections. So that massively different skillset is hard to find in one person or in even two people and so when companies are smaller it makes a lot of sense to do an outsourced model like ours because you can take slices out of each of those levels and get everything you need with one service.

Jen Hildahl: We work with many different businesses, many different clients. So we can gain efficiencies through that. We can see what works well for some clients and apply it to the next client. We also work a lot with other CPA’s, so we can learn from ours peers and learn from other clients. Whereas if you’re working in house, it’s great because they are always there, they’re down the hall, you just just pop in, but they’re really kind of in a bubble.

They are not learning from other CPAs if it’s a small firm and you only have one accountant. So I think there’s just efficiencies and really great learning opportunities when you’re working with multiple businesses.

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Title Slide: Employees vs. Contractors | With Luella Schmidt

Luella Schmidt: We get asked this question a lot, what the difference is between employees and contractors. The deal is we get a lot of business owners where they think, well, I’ll just save on payroll taxes, I’ll just pay everybody as a contractor and they think that you can just do that. Unfortunately, the federal government has a set of rules that you have to follow, sort of guidelines on how to determine whether they are an employee or a contractor and the state government also has a slightly different set of rules. (more…)

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Title Slide: If Not an Accountant, What Would You Be? | With Luella Schmidt, Jen Hildahl, and Leah Shales

Jen Hildahl: I don’t know what I would be doing. I feel like I don’t know where else my skill set is. The only other job I’ve really had in my life has been a lifeguard, but you know it’s not very intellectually challenging so, as much as I think that was a great job, I think I would be bored by now. So, I’m happy being an accountant.

Leah Shales: I would either be, I would strive to be a Hollywood actress or I would be a professional roller derby person. I don’t roller derby now, but I think that it would be a really awesome career.

Luella Schmidt: To be a history professor. I’ve always thought history is just fascinating. I like to read a lot about it and I think teaching is a really noble profession.

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Title Slide: Best Restaurants in Madison

Jen Hildahl: My favorite Madison-area restaurant…

Luella Schmidt: I often go to Liliana’s, which is in Fitchburg. It is very close to the office so that’s one of our favorite hangouts for lunch. And Bonfyre is also very close to the office, a very good hangout for lunch.(more…)

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Title Slide: Doing Business in Madison | With Jen Hildahl, Luella Schmidt, and Leah Shales

Jen Hildahl: My favorite part about doing business in Madison is definitely the people and the culture. It seems like such a well-balanced culture between work and being outside and nature and being just in the community.

Luella Schmidt: The biggest surprise I had when I was new is that people were so willing to help. I would meet somebody and they would offer to introduce me to somebody. You would send an email to someone who had never met you and they would be willing to meet you for coffee and just give you advice. It’s pretty amazing.

Leah Shales: My favorite part about doing business in Madison is the people. Everyone is so driven, which is an awesome quality, but everyone is also so friendly.

Jen Hildahl: In Madison, I think people get outside, they enjoy the lakes, the trails, everything. I just like the culture and the atmosphere.

Luella Schmidt: The Madison community is small, but not small which actually makes it really fun.